You and Me on Milk Cartons
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, Sam/Dean. A history of Sam, except, you know, through Dean.


Title: You and Me on Milk Cartons

Author: Candle Beck

Pairing: Slash, Sam/Dean

Rating: R

Spoilers: Pre-series.

Warnings: Cannot get enough of jailbait Sam, over here.

Summary: It's the story of Sam Winchester's gay sexual history, but, you know, through Dean.

You and Me on Milk Cartons

By Candle Beck

The first time it happened Dean was nineteen years old and he was drunk.

There were three hundred dollars in poker winnings folded around the fake ID in his pocket. The moon was full, mesmerizing him like a cat's eye glare on the long walk home. Clear cold air burning in his chest and it was almost November and he'd expected to sober up once out of the smoke and humidity of the bar, but no such luck. His hand fumbled reaching for the doorknob; he tripped over his feet crossing the dark room.

His father was somewhere else. His brother was still awake, sitting up when Dean pushed into their room.

Dean grinned, sloppy drunk grin that felt good stuck to his face. Sam was a narrow outline formed mostly of shoulders and ragged hair, sheets puddled at his waist.

"Hey there Sammy." Dean stripped off his coat and tried to hang it on the doorknob and it slithered to the ground, empty as a snakeskin, and this amused Dean and he sniggered. He almost lost his balance bending down to get it.

"Dude, how drunk are you."

It wasn't a question, but Dean bobbed his head, answered, "Real fuckin'. How's by you?"

Sam's silhouette shook its head. He hissed out a sigh between his teeth, slid out of bed and came over to where Dean was swaying and struggling to remain conscious.

Sam was there, right in front of him with his eyes impossible to read and his mouth in a hard little line. Dean put his hand on Sam's face, pushed his fingers across Sam's mouth.

"Smile," he cajoled. Big grin, showing Sam how it was done.

Sam only sighed again. He tipped his head back and Dean's hand slipped off his face and that made Dean feel lousy for a second. Sam steered him over to his bed, pushed him down by the shoulders. Dean went willingly, blinking up at his brother in the bleached moonlight that faded through the dirty windows. His eyes were adjusting, and he could pick out the tension in Sam's jaw, the hole the size of a nickel in the shoulder of his T-shirt.

"You, ah, you shoulda come out with me, man."

"Yeah?"

Only humoring Dean, Sam was distracted, hands busy working the buttons of Dean's shirt open. There was a strange downward pull in Dean's stomach, dumbly watching Sam's fingers flick down his chest, strip of plain white T-shirt revealed like a runway.

"Coulda been like a, a, whatsit, a plant. Won a couple games off me first to, um. Lull them. False sense of security, like."

Sam snorted. He rolled his eyes and the whites flashed. "Don't think I would have been allowed in, Dean."

"You're like nine feet tall," Dean muttered, and was confused briefly. He wasn't sure what he was trying to say.

A hand cupped solid around the back of his head, and Sam angled him forward, letting Dean rest his forehead on his chest as he tugged Dean's shirt off his arms. Dean breathed deep, cheap laundry detergent and old sweat, and his nose pressed into Sam and Sam was warm and he liked that a lot. His arms were wrenched behind his back and for a second it was like he was bound, tied in place. But it was only Sam, so Dean was not afraid.

"You shouldn't get so drunk while you're hustling people," Sam told him. "Gonna get your ass kicked one of these days."

Dean pffted. "Never in a million years."

"Idiot," Sam said, but Dean didn't think he meant it. He smiled up at his brother, the chill air raising bumps on the newly bared skin of his arms. He could feel his heart beating, a tangible thud against the inside of his ribs.

"Little bitch," he said affectionately, and he was drunk and it was so late and it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do, so he pressed his face into Sam's chest again and felt the sharp hitch of Sam's gasp under his cheek. It was incredible, action-reaction like Dean had found a hidden switch.

"What-" Sam started to say, his voice cracking, and then he stopped abruptly. He shoved Dean back, monster hands strong on Dean's shoulders, and Dean flopped down on the bed.

His head spun, all blur and heat; there was a wicked wrench in his stomach and he thought he might have just done something stupid.

"Sorry, Sam," he said, not sure for what but covering his bases at least, and closed his eyes.

He wished he was asleep, all of a sudden. He wished he was sober and could understand what was going on.

There was a long moment of silence and Dean waited to pass out, riding the wave of the drunk and imagining himself sinking slowly into syrup. Down and down and things would look better in the morning, if only because they couldn't look worse.

And then there was a hand on Dean's stomach, pushing up his shirt. Two hands, working his jeans open and there was something wrong about that, something unacceptable, but Dean couldn't get his head together enough to figure out what. His legs were hanging off the bed and he could hear his breathing go uneven and his hips hiked up purely by instinct as the hands tugged his jeans down, and it wasn't right, why wasn't it right?

Huge warm hand on him through his shorts, rubbing up and down and Dean made a choked sound. One moment to the next, and he was hard as glass, dizzy with the thrumming liquid rush of it. Perfect clumsy grip, unsure and exploratory, fingertips pressing on dampening fabric, and was that him, moaning? Was that what he sounded like, desperate and needy like that? Jesus _Christ_, what the fuck was wrong with him?

"Shit," Dean mumbled. Strangled and broken-sounding and too loud, and then Sam was whispering:

"Shh, Dean, it's okay,"

and Dean's eyes jerked open and he stared in disbelief down the length of his body. Down to where Sam was kneeling on the floor, where Sam had his head laid carefully beside Dean's hip, where Sam was staring intently at his own hand jerking off his brother, nothing between them but thin cotton that was no better than air.

"Oh god," Dean said, not recognizing his own voice, harsh panting thing that it was. His hips were moving, pushing into his brother's hand over and over again like a machine. "Don't, Sammy, you can't-"

But Sam didn't care. He shushed Dean's name absently and he'd found a rhythm that made Dean tremble and bite off curses and Sam didn't let up. Sam had to stop but he wouldn't and Dean didn't know how to make him. He couldn't think. So fucking sweet, Sam's hand moving on him rough and hard and good, and Dean felt bits of his mind chipping away, gone red behind his eyelids and somewhere way far away he could hear himself begging Sam's name but he wasn't asking him to stop, not anymore.

Not ever again.

(break)

So Dean was going to hell on account of his brother. It was possible that that was always going to happen, runes writ in blood somewhere, but Dean never expected it would go like this.

He woke up with an awful clenched feeling in his chest, an idiotic pounding in his head, and his shorts were stuck to his skin and he itched all over. Sam was in his own bed, wrapped up tight with his back like a cage, and Dean stared at him for a long time. His mouth was thick and dry and Sam had jerked him off last night. Sam had jerked him off and Dean had let him.

He took a shower without touching the hot water tap. His skin tinged faintly blue and Dean was shivering hard as a beater going a hundred miles an hour, coming apart at the seams.

Dean was supposed to look after Sam. It was hardwired into him like the color of his eyes, and his tolerance for pain, and the limit of how fast he could run. It was the first and last rule he lived by, etched in his bones. But look what had happened. Look what he'd done now.

They didn't talk much that day. Sam wouldn't meet his eyes. Dean kept wanting to shake him, force out of him, _what the fuck were you thinking_, but he couldn't put his hands on Sam. He couldn't trust what would happen next, and anyway, he knew what it was. Sam was fifteen and exactly as stupid as every other fifteen year old on the planet. He had no appreciation for consequence and moved solely on impulse, the kind of thing that left kids hooked on hard drugs and dead by the side of the road. It was Dean's job to keep him in line, keep him from getting too deep inside his own head. Keep him safe.

All of which Dean had failed at spectacularly. Drunk was a pretty bad excuse, and once the hangover cleared, Dean was left with choking remorse, shaking hands, and a brother no better than a stranger. These things didn't belong to him. He didn't know what to do with them.

Later, then, late that night and Dean was lying awake staring at the brontosaurus-shaped water stain in the ceiling plaster, listening to the sound of Sam breathing. Sam wasn't asleep, Dean could tell from his too-fast breaths, and something was chewing Dean up on the inside, shredding him.

His chest hitched. He said, "Sam-" and his voice cracked and he balled up a fist, punched himself on the leg.

There was a long moment of silence before Sam said, "Yeah?"

Voice in the dark like town lights at the end of the highway, almost hopeful, and Dean couldn't breathe. All he wanted to do was get up and cross to Sam's bed, shove his brother over and slide in next to him. There was a new kind of peace on the other side of the room, just one more thing Dean wasn't allowed.

"I. I'm sorry, man," Dean told him, his heart breaking so clearly it should have been audible.

Sharp indrawn hiss, and without hesitation Sam answered dully, "Go to hell."

Dean didn't know what to say to that. He'd gotten it wrong again. He was never going to get anything right ever again.

He rolled over to face the wall. Sam's bed creaked and rustled and Dean squeezed his eyes shut. The space at his back felt cold and dead and Dean did not sleep, suffering instead through extended dazes, fugues in which Sam's hands were spread out huge on his body, Sam's eyes flipping black and white and the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. Dean's mind was crowded, overrun. He felt haunted, or hunted, something terrible like that.

In the morning, the sunlight scoured like acid and Sam was his normal self again, bitchy and bratty and stealing the end piece of the toast. Dean watched him carefully, clutching his hands under the table, and Sam bared his teeth, eyes flashing cruel, and chased Dean off.

Dean let him go. He got used to the ache that Sam had left behind, and after awhile Dean was able to convince himself that it was only guilt.

Three years passed.

(break)

The second time was at the end of Sam's eighteenth summer.

They were holed up in a tiny mountain town on the western slope of Colorado, high enough that the air was insubstantial and they went around short of breath all the time. Sam kept needling, gouging their father about petty shit and the course of the future, and Dean was exhausted from holding his family together with his bare hands. He told Sam over and over, "Just quit it, just _stop_," but it never worked.

He'd thought that once Sam graduated high school, the pointless defiance would seep out of him, but it'd only gotten worse. Rage simmered under Sam's skin. He snapped at the slightest provocation, jerked at sudden noises and hardly slept at all. Dean watched him get carved down, stripped to sinew and hot-running blood, until Sam was honed like a knife and just as dangerous.

There was a screaming fight that morning, a full-scale armageddon type of thing that ended with Sam hurling a coffee mug at John and John, with shards of moss-green ceramic at his feet and a dent in the wall beside his head, veins standing out hard in his neck, ordered him to get the fuck out of his sight. Dean was sitting on the front step with his knees drawn up, listening, and he stood a half-second before Sam banged out of the door, furious tears standing like lights in his eyes.

Dean just said, "C'mon," and took off running. He didn't look back, not daring to hope, but he could hear the steady thwap of Sam's strides like an echo of his own, the clogged pull of every breath.

They ran. Past the post office and the cafe and the church with its black-and-white marquee reading, _The Way and the Truth and the Life_, only the L was turned around backwards and it made the whole thing look weirdly cryptic, sinister. There were no sidewalks and the asphalt was busted up into fist-sized chunks at the shoulder. They ran uphill, up the mountain. Dean could hardly breathe, blades in his chest and a wet rag shoved down his throat, but he wouldn't be the first to give.

Eventually the road petered out and they were scrambling through brush and half-formed trails. White spots exploded in Dean's eyes and he might have collapsed if Sam hadn't let out a pained cry behind him.

Dean skidded to a stop, spun to find his brother standing with his chest heaving and one hand on his face.

"What?" Dean was gasping, reedy and winded. "What. Happened?"

Sam was panting himself, his hair darkened with sweat and his face shining. He took his hand down and Dean jolted forward, hands lurching up, because there was a slash of blood on Sam's cheek.

"What'd you do?" Each word had to be torn out of his lungs.

Sam pressed his lips together, shook his head. "Branch, just a branch."

But Sam's eyes were bloodshot and blurred and Dean realized after a second it wasn't just sweat on his face. Sam was crying, maybe had been the whole time he'd been chasing Dean's back.

The scratch was shockingly bright, red as a stoplight, and a tear rolled down over it, dropped off Sam's jaw tinted pink.

Dean stepped up to him, trying to get himself under control. His vision was still spotty, but Sam was clear and miserable. Dean put a hand on Sam's shoulder and swiped at his face clumsily with his fingers, wanting to say _don't cry_ or _don't bleed_, or something equally ineffectual. He bit his tongue. His fingers came away wet.

"Can't turn my back on you for a second," Dean said when he could mostly breathe again.

Sam blinked, big eyes all spidery-red, chest still hitching. He looked lost, helpless and mute.

Needing to get that look off his face, needing to do _something_, Dean twisted the hem of his shirt and ripped a swatch out of it. Sam's eyes dropped, staring at the revealed patch of Dean's stomach, and warmth crawled into Dean and curled around the empty space inside. Very carefully, he cleaned the blood and sweat and tears off Sam's face. His hand on Sam's shoulder was the only thing keeping him upright.

"Dean," Sam said, strange and low. "Are you mad at me too?"

"No."

It was an automatic response, no consideration behind it, and Sam grimaced, lines pressing in on his forehead.

"Why not? Why aren't you mad at me, you, you really should be-"

"Hey." Dean dropped the damp dirty bit of shirt and fit his hand on the side of Sam's neck, held him still like that. "Calm down.

Sam shook his head hard, his mouth wrenched into a knot. "No, Dean, I can't. All I do anymore is ruin everything, and, and you should be mad at me, so get mad, c'mon."

He pushed at Dean's chest, tried to break his hold but Dean wouldn't have that, wouldn't let him go. Sam made a rough tearing sound in the back of his throat.

"Please, you fuck, I'm fuckin' begging you," and Sam grabbed on to Dean's shirt, fisted it in both hands, yanking him back and forth so that Dean slipped on the loose dirt. The expression on his wounded face was unreal, warped and frantic and sparking cold fear in Dean's chest.

"Sammy, no, stop it," Dean tried to order him, but direct orders never really worked on Sam, never ever had.

Sam shoved him again, a crazy kind of heat darting across his eyes. Dean felt like he was made of elastic, bouncing back to his brother again and again.

"You're gonna," Sam swore. His fists were stone on Dean's chest. He looked kinda insane. "I'll make you."

Dean didn't know what he was talking about, trying to interpret the weightless fall in his stomach and no, he wasn't mad at Sam, more like terrified and Dean didn't know how to process that.

"I'll make you," Sam said again, and then he pulled Dean to him and pressed their mouths together. Dean felt Sam's teeth on his lip and his whole body flushed and something snapped in his chest.

He jerked backwards, a deranged voice hollering _NO_ against every instinct in his body, and he lost his footing, the world just vanishing from under him. He tumbled back into the brush and Sam followed him down.

Sam fell on him, his weight pinning Dean's sprawled legs, and Dean would have bruises in the shape of Sam's knuckles tomorrow, spread under his collarbones. He couldn't breathe--this fucking altitude.

Sam was sucking on the underside of Dean's jaw, and Dean was gasping again, feeling his lungs contract and the blood rush to the spot where Sam's mouth was open and hot and dragging hidden fantasies out of him. He pushed at Sam's shoulders feebly, trying to give voice to the giant _NO_ that clamored inside him, but it wouldn't come. It was jammed, stuck in Dean like a stake through his heart.

Sam slid down Dean's body, licked across his stomach, nosing against his torn shirt. Dean had his eyes shut as tight as they would go. His hands trembled at his sides, and he wanted to reach for Sam, bury his fingers in Sam's mop of hair and guide him, but he couldn't touch him. He wouldn't.

Quick-fingered and mumbling nonsense, Sam worked Dean's fly open and pushed his hand in and Dean's back formed a perfect bow, his head digging into the ground. A moan that sounded like Sam's name broke from him and disappeared into the trees. Sam bit his hip and pulled him out. He licked at Dean, almost more curious than anything else, obvious that Sam had never done this before and Dean wanted to hate that thought, he wanted it to spur him into righteous action, but it only made it better. Another first of Sam's that Dean had stolen, first handjob, first blowjob, and motherfuck, that was his baby brother he was corrupting, his own Sam. Dean could barely stomach how good it felt.

Sam took his time. He learned Dean inch by inch, moment by aching moment, as Dean panted and writhed and clenched his fists in the dirt. Sunlight burned through his eyelids, painting red and hot. His universe was telescoped, closed down to Sam's impossible mouth, his long fingers and the damp brush of his hair on Dean's stomach.

Dean wished he knew how to make him stop. More than that, worse, he wished he knew how to want to make Sam stop.

(break)

Dean woke up in the woods still. There were twigs poking into his back and leaves in his hair, light filtering spastically through the trees. The surface of his skin felt grimed, black crescents at the tips of his fingernails, dirt ground in too deep to scrub off.

He sat up, and reeled. Silvery carbonation filled his head, dizzying as his stomach cramped and roiled. There was a second when he latched on to the idea that it was all a dream, one of those awful heat-soaked dreams that had been infecting him for three years now, but his jeans were still undone and he had a hickey way low on his stomach, quarter-sized and livid.

Sam was gone. There was a crashed trail of broken branches and battered dirt leading down the mountain, two sets of footprints coming up and one set going down.

Dean rose on rubbery legs. He fixed himself up best he could, shaking the debris from his hair and taking several minutes to do up the metal buttons of his fly, his fingers uncooperative and unreliable. His face felt hot and tight and it took him a long time to realize he had a sunburn.

He didn't know how long he'd been out. He needed to find Sam.

His head wouldn't come together, a weltering mash-up of images and emotions, and Dean slapped himself a few times, flaring and stinging across sunburned skin, trying to shake it and it didn't work. Nothing in him was working like it was supposed to.

Sam was out back of the little store, sitting on an upturned wooden crate with a glass bottle of Coke sweating between his hands. His knees were pulled up, features squinted against the sun. He didn't move or acknowledge Dean's presence in any way. Dean sat down on the crate next to him and nobody said anything for awhile.

Dean was dazed, felt like his spine had been wrenched out and shoved back in crooked. There was a buzz under his skin, happy got-laid feeling trying to run riot but he kept cramming it down, burying it in sick-making guilt. He stared at the sun, half-heartedly waiting to go blind.

Cold against the back of his hand, and Dean jerked, badly on edge. Sam pressed the Coke at him, and Dean took it, took a long sweet drink. He glanced at his brother and Sam was staring at him, something like desperation on his face.

"Why'd you do that, Sam?"

Sam cut his eyes away, shrugged. "Dunno."

"Yeah you do."

Pulling a rough hand through his hair, Sam bit his lip, drawing Dean's eyes like a bonfire on a beach. Sam started to answer a couple of times, but didn't come up with anything, and then he said, voice flat:

"I wanted to. And. You wanted me to."

Dean shook his head, but he didn't deny it. He cracked his knuckles one by one against his knee, gaze locked on the veined asphalt.

"You were trying to make me mad?"

He hadn't intended that as a question, but there it hung between them, anticipatory and demanding. Sam chewed his lip, a vertical line etched between his eyebrows.

"Did it work?"

"No. Maybe." Dean was frustrated; nothing made sense today. "You shouldn't have done that."

Sam moved one shoulder, loosing a sigh. "Tell me about it."

"Sam-"

"It'll be easier for you," Sam cut him off, sudden and fast. "If you could just be mad at me."

"What. What are you talking about?" Fear clawed like a living thing inside him, a wild animal set free.

Sam shook his head, motes of dust clouding from his hair. His face was pinched and tired-looking, hands wrung between his knees.

"I'm fucked-up in like seven different ways," Sam told him. "You should really. You should stay away from me."

A wrecked laugh twisted in Dean's throat, jagged sound like a bird's caw. "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

Sam didn't answer, his eyes and mouth tightening as he looked away. Dean stared at the clean side of his face, the artful scratch just under his collarbone. He wanted to touch Sam, slide his fingers into Sam's hair and pull Sam's mouth to his. He balled his fists. He dug his teeth into the inside of his cheek.

"Listen to me," Dean said, not liking how thready and frantic he sounded but unable to do anything about it. "If, if you're fucked-up like this, then so am I. I could have stopped you."

A quick hard glance from Sam, knifelike and speculative. Dean swallowed, his mouth Coke-sticky and his throat too slick.

"So don't act like you're special or something," he finished lamely. "You don't get to be fucked-up on your own."

A moment passed. A scraggly piece of straw-colored tumbleweed wheeled across the asphalt, and Dean watched Sam watching it, careful track of his eyes. When Sam spoke, it was without looking at his brother.

"This isn't going to end well."

Dean laughed again, same bad ruined tone in it. "What ever does?"

Sam pressed his lips into a thread. His hair was falling in front of his eyes and Dean's hand itched to push it back, but he kept himself under control.

"Whatever happens," Sam said, toneless and dead-sounding. "I want you to know that you're the one I love the most."

For some reason, that chilled Dean to the bone. His hand was numb around the glass bottle and he couldn't take his eyes off Sam, Sam's bowed head and the hurt curve of his shoulders. He couldn't breathe and maybe he'd never breathe again; maybe this was what life would feel like from here on out.

Two weeks later, Sam set down a big envelope with a sequoia tree stamp on the kitchen table, and explained to his family that he was leaving.

Dean understood everything, after that. Light poured across the world and Dean could see it all.

(break)

The third time was the first time Dean had seen Sam in twenty-one months.

Life on the other side of Sam's disappearance had turned out exactly as bad as Dean would have predicted, had Dean been able to predict anything. He and his father hadn't stayed anywhere longer than a month for better than a year. Highways unspooled and they haunted a never-ending string of tacky motel rooms with cigarette burns in the sheets and washed-out bloodstains on the walls and the dead-drunk sound of John snoring in the other bed, and Dean lay awake. Dean counted werewolves and wendigos and witches and the weeks that Sam had been gone. He didn't really sleep much anymore.

He was becoming a better hunter by the day and he clung to that. John did too; the only kind things he had to say to his son were about his aim and his first move and his facility with a lighter and a flask of accelerant. Dean tried to believe that this would be enough, this savior life from which he'd never tried to run, but it was difficult. It wouldn't stick. They grunted through the mornings, left the radio on loud on the road, and spoke about the current case or the next one and that was all.

Sam leaving had ripped something out of John. He seemed carved out of wood most of the time, hollows gouged under his eyes and his jaw set hard. He drank too much and couldn't say shit when Dean did too. He hadn't smiled for real in a year and a half; Dean had mostly stopped hoping for it.

In South Dakota for a couple of weeks, Bobby and John fixed up an old truck the piss-yellow color of a specific demon's eyes. Dean didn't get the significance, sweating out in the junkyard and waiting for his stitches to come out, sheltering among the wrecks, until John passed him the Impala's keys over sour coffee and told him as solemn as an oath, "Better take care of her, son."

They started splitting up more after that. Dean was something almost like happy behind the wheel of the Impala (his now, his very own), tearing up the highways and playing only his own music, but the gaping absence in the shotgun seat trailed him wherever he went. It wasn't his dad he was missing.

In Nebraska, Dean relocated his own shoulder in a motel room. He looked up how on the Internet, largely delirious from agony, and he used a wooden chair with a thin padded seat the color of faded mouthwash. It took him almost two hours; he passed out three times. To that point in his action-packed life, it was the second most painful thing that had ever happened to him.

Then there was a nest of vampires in Santa Cruz, annoying-ass goth kids who'd seen _The Lost Boys_ one too many times and skulked along the beaches searching the caves for a decaying hotel. Dean dispatched them with maybe a little too much gore and giddiness, the machete a whipping extension of his arm and the dull thunking sound of heads hitting the sand, and then he sat on the beach, covered in blood turning black, catching his breath.

A draining pull in his chest, a growing ache in his shoulder, and Sam was just on the other side of the mountain. Sam was a beacon even if he didn't want to be. He was a flame and Dean was moth-small, no longer under his own power.

Dean took the hairpins and suicide turns of Highway 17 with the trees huddled closely around like a ring of rednecks looming over him. He was flash-blinded by the headlights coming from the other direction, and bottomed out into the valley, the bay gleaming silver-black and ominous.

He had Sam's address because it was the single thing he had demanded of his brother: _you have to let me know where you are_. John wouldn't ask so Dean had to. Dean had to because he couldn't not know; they couldn't lose Sam that completely. Sam had been in a dorm last year but had sent a postcard at the beginning of the year from a run-down apartment building on the East Palo Alto side of 101, where Dean imagined he could hear the faint pop-pop of gunfire when he got out of the car and stood in the cirrhotic streetlight, counting splintered windows.

The air was devastatingly clear, tinted by the marshy smell of the bay and Dean felt his lungs fill all the way for the first time in almost two years. There was a total absence of any kind of weather.

A smashed crack pipe glittered in the stairwell beside a tiny empty gram bag with skulls and crossbones printed on it. The lightbulbs in the hallway were all blown, and Dean traced his fingers around the numbers on the doors, graying his fingertips and taking more time than he probably needed.

No one answered the first knock. Dean felt exhaustion dragging at his shoulders and he wondered how late it was. He knocked again, louder, really pounding this time, and mad tension scrambled through him, the door rattling in its frame.

Sam jerked the door open, "Enrique, what the _fuck_," and then he got a look at Dean and his mouth fell open and his eyes went huge.

"D-Dean," Sam managed, and his hands reached out and Dean flinched backwards even though Sam's hands on him was all he wanted. "You, are you hurt?"

Dean shook his head, what a stupid question, and then realized he was still stained with vampire blood. He'd washed perfunctorily in a gas station bathroom, just to avoid messing up his car, but he could feel the stiff crinkle of dried blood on his face.

"Not mine. I'm okay."

Sam's hands fluttered, faltered. His eyes blazed out pale from behind the fringe of his hair, his teeth already worrying at his lip, and Dean could stand here in the hallway studying him for the rest of his goddamn life, that was how bad it'd gotten.

"Come here, come in," Sam said, and stepped aside. Dean's legs were shaking, his whole body really, but he tried not to show it.

He followed Sam in and it was just a crummy little studio apartment with bookshelves made of cinderblocks and plywood stretched along the walls, stuffed overflowing, books in teetering stacks everywhere. A fold-out couch with dingy sheets took up most of the available space. There was a scorched carbon-monoxide smell coming from the kitchen, a skitter of cockroaches across the bathroom floor.

This was what Sam had left them for, Dean thought in amazement. This was the life he preferred.

"Nice place you got here," he said, and winced inwardly at how snide it sounded. Maybe that had been the intention, but he didn't like the result.

Sam only shrugged. "Cheap," he said. "Rent's unbelievable out here." He paused, then asked haltingly, "Is Dad. Where is he?"

"Tupelo, last I heard." Dean rubbed his palm on his jeans. "He's all right."

Sam nodded, his throat ducking as he swallowed, and then disappeared into the bathroom. Dean scratched at his arms, not liking that Sam was out of view even though it was less than a minute before he emerged with a wet washcloth.

"Here."

Dean scrubbed his face, got behind his ears and the back of his neck. He twisted the rag between his hands, grayish water dripping on the floor. Tracking his eyes over the dirty carpet, he tallied the cupped pockmarks left by removed furniture, looked for dinosaur shapes in the ash-colored stains out of habit. He was buying time and Sam could tell, of course Sam could tell.

"What are you doing here, Dean?"

The corner of Dean's mouth bent up of its own volition, half a sneer. "I was actually in the neighborhood. Vampires."

"In Santa Cruz?"

Dean looked up, surprised, and caught Sam blushing, shifting his eyes away. "I, um, I saw a story in the Mercury, seemed like it might be."

"You knew-" but Dean stopped himself before he could say anything more. Sam's face was a humiliated brick color, shame burning bright and high. Dean couldn't wrap his mind around it. Sam had known people were dying just over the mountain, he'd seen the stories and witnessed the bloody crime scene photographs and he hadn't done anything about it.

"I. It needed to be a clean break," Sam said, faint pleading note to it. Dean nodded, his mouth dry. His stomach felt shriveled, peach-pit small and gnarled.

"It's all right, Sam," Dean said, even though it very plainly _wasn't_.

Sam wouldn't meet his eyes, and Dean got to stare at him without fear of reproach, relearning the neat angle of Sam's cheekbones and the precise leaf-like fall of his hair across his eyes. _Missed you_, Dean thought, and it was a dumb thing to think, so obvious and unnecessary.

"How." Dean's voice sounded bizarre and strangled and he stopped, cleared his throat. "How's this whole supergenius thing working out for you?"

Sam let out a huffing breath, restoring a baseline level of irritation that warmed the fuck out of Dean's heart.

"Since when do you give a crap about my school stuff?"

"Since never, Sammy. Just making conversation."

"Well, don't." Sam scowled at him and it was like a punch in the chest, but kind of in a good way, so well-known and sore-missed. "Don't pretend like everything's cool."

"Fine," Dean shot back, familiar Sam-related anger rearing up inside him. "How's this whole abandoning-your-family thing working out for you, then?"

Sam's face went stark, pale with shock and rage, and he advanced on Dean. His hands were in fists at his sides and it was only instinct that made Dean's adrenaline spike, only the visual of a man bigger than he was coming towards him with violence beating out of him. Dean wasn't actually scared of _Sam_.

"The family I abandoned," Sam said, measuring out each word and spitting them at Dean's feet, "didn't give a fuck who I was or what I wanted."

"_I_ didn't give a fuck?" Dean repeated, aghast.

"Not enough, Dean, and you know how I know that? If you had, if you'd taken my side once in a while, I would still be with you. You didn't, so I'm not. Cause and fucking effect."

Dean's mouth opened but nothing came out. His chest felt deflated, flat as an old tire, all his anger and frustration snatched away. Over the past twenty-one months he'd done pretty well with blaming himself for Sam leaving--it'd become a favored past-time, along with recreating the two times that Sam had touched his dick, which of course tied neatly back to why it was Dean's fault Sam had left, all of it very nice and vicious and cyclical--but for all his recriminations he hadn't actually believed that Sam felt the same way.

"I," Dean said, and then staggered over to Sam's simple wooden desk and fell into its straight-backed chair. He'd been his own worst enemy for a long time now, but even he wouldn't have wished this on himself.

"Dean?"

Twining strain of doubt and remorse in Sam's voice, but Dean wasn't listening to that. His elbows were on the desk and his head in his hands, hearing Sam say over and over again, _you didn't, so I'm not_.

"I tried, Sam," he managed after a terrifying length of time. "I didn't know, I tried everything I could think of. I was gonna handcuff you to me, I, I kept thinking of the craziest things. I'm sorry it wasn't good enough."

He pressed his palms hard against his eyes. He said for the millionth time, "I'm sorry, Sammy."

Sam made a choked noise, and the floor gave a moan as he took a step towards Dean. Dean had this sense of Sam, this internal compass when they were within a few city blocks of each other. He knew Sam was close enough to touch him, but wasn't really expecting it when Sam laid a hand on top of his hair and ghosted his fingers across Dean's temple.

"Dean," Sam said again, said Dean's name all the time, his favorite punctuation. "I don't know why I say things like that to you."

Dean coughed weakly, still covering his eyes. "Neither do I. Maybe it's genetic."

"It isn't true."

Dean didn't dignify that. Sam's fingertip notched into the dent at his temple, working out the gibberish Morse code of Dean's pulse.

"You didn't have anything to do with why I left," Sam continued, and Dean thought that the kid never had known when to quit, such a brat still after all this time. "Only reason I had to stay."

"Jesus Christ, Sam, I can't listen to this shit," Dean ground the heel of his hand into his eye socket, finding a perfect fit, and he said hoarsely, his face downcast and Sam's hand moving through his hair, "Can we get to the good part already? The fuck do you think I came out here for?"

The important thing to remember was, Dean had meant that as a joke.

It didn't come out sounding like one, though, wasn't funny in any way, so he couldn't really blame Sam for reacting like he did.

Sam's hand slid fast down the back of his head, locked hard on the nape of Dean's neck and drew him out of the chair. Pulled Dean up so neat and swift, and Dean's eyes flew open to see Sam breathing through his mouth, pupils wide and black and his expression fixed between desire and anger and all this other stuff that Dean wasn't trying to interpret.

Sam tossed him down on the bed easy as anything, stripped off his shirt and crawled on top of his brother. Dean's arms came up, forearms sliding hot along the skin of Sam's sides, and he pressed in hard, fighting a bolting urge to shove him away.

But Sam licked across his mouth and kissed him and that was the last line of Dean's defenses broken, wiped out.

He held on to Sam, and he kissed him back. It wasn't a lie, Dean realized at that moment--this was the only reason he'd come.

First for everything, and so Dean ended up fucking his kid brother that night, thinking half-hysterically that he might as well get the full set. Long after Sam got him drunk on making out and got them both off bare-skinned against each other, long after they fell asleep naked in the same bed (another first), Sam woke him up in the best way and then _asked_, actually asked all raw-throated and wet-mouthed with his chin on Dean's hip, and so, yes. Dean said yes.

There'd been girls, definitely there'd been girls, but this meant as much, Dean fervently believed. Nobody else had ever had Sam flat on his stomach gnawing at the pillow and punching the bed. Nobody else had ever had Sam's back all laid out for them, shuddering and rising like a current. Nobody else had ever mouthed across the hooks of Sam's shoulder blades and wrapped their hands around his narrow hips from precisely that angle.

This right here was just for Dean.

(break)

In the morning, Sam was still there.

It was as surprising as anything that had happened the night before.

Under one sheet and covered up in sunlight, Sam had his arm slung loosely across Dean's throat and apparently they'd slept like that and Dean wasn't sure how he'd been breathing all night. Sam was a sleek stretch of back, tangled mess of hair with his face buried in the pillow. Dean touched his brother's side, swallowed and felt his adam's apple press into the inside of Sam's elbow. He spread his fingers out wide, spanning Sam's ribs. Each breath Sam took formed to Dean's palm; it was kind of incredible.

Dean allowed himself about five minutes, sun soaking thickly over his skin. He was real careful disengaging, and Sam didn't wake up.

Dean put on his shorts and a shirt of Sam's because he couldn't find his own, and hid out in the kitchen, clumsily making coffee on the stovetop because he didn't know how to work Sam's fancy espresso-looking Death Star thing. He struggled to get his story straight.

Once every couple of years, apparently, he was going to have sex with Sam. It would get worse each time, and by 'worse,' Dean meant better. More irrevocable. Dean couldn't for the life of him stop thinking about all the other things he wanted to do to Sam, wondering in fragments, _would he, could I_, before slamming a gate down on his mind. The possibilities were beyond number.

Staring at the coffee simmering in Sam's single blue pot, Dean played off his flush as the coalescing steam. Once every couple of years, and that wasn't so bad. Blackout drunks and dire conflict and long absences, the very quiet moments when life altered, and Dean would have Sam then. He'd come find Sam wherever Sam had run to, break into all his future homes and steal a beer, waiting for Sam to soft-walk down the hall and throw him bodily up against a wall. They'd fight and then they'd argue and then Dean would push Sam down across the backseat of the Impala, straddle his hips and be able to watch in a spill of moonlight the way Sam squirmed and moaned and clutched at him.

It wasn't right. It would never be right. But Sam needed it, not so very often but sometimes, and Dean, well, Dean had been on his own for a long time now.

Metal springs whined as Sam sat up in bed, and then the give of the floor as he got to his feet. Dean kept his eyes on the poppling surface of the coffee, listening intently as Sam stumbled and yawned loud.

He appeared in the doorway just in his boxers, bleary-eyed with his hair wood-colored and in a mad crash. Leaning on his shoulder on the jamb, Sam scratched his stomach where, Dean was poleaxed to see, he had stubble burn.

"Dude," Sam said in greeting.

Dean rubbed at his rough chin, cleared his throat. "You, um, you don't have any cereal."

"There's a box of Cheerios under some books somewhere." Sam yawned, silver glinting in the back of his mouth. "Is that coffee? There's a maker, you know."

Dean grunted. It was starting to go good now, bubbles exploding unpredictably across the dark surface, faster on the heels of the last. "I like it this way."

"Peasant."

Startled, Dean shot a look at Sam and Sam was maybe thinking about smiling at him. Dean felt his expression contort awkwardly, different emotions tugging in contradictory directions. _Fucked you a few hours ago,_ he thought, and his stomach swanned, his eyes puling hard over Sam's smooth chest, the slim definition in his arms.

"None for you, then," he managed.

"I'm gonna get a breakfast burrito," Sam said. "There's this truck around the block, they got the best chorizo you ever tasted, man, I swear." He stretched against the door, and Dean gaped silently. "Takin' a shower first, though, that's for damn sure."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair and offered Dean a strange sleepy half-smile. Dean tried to mirror it, but he didn't think he was successful. He watched Sam's shoulders and his perfect back disappearing into the main room, and then kinda collapsed against the kitchen counter. HIs heart was jackhammering, his mind gasping.

Dean had maybe underestimated this whole thing.

They got their burritos and sat on a concrete traffic barrier watching the day laborers and highway crews and construction workers bullshitting over donuts and coffee, standing in loose groups of threes and fours. There was a warehouse-shaped skeleton of I-beams rising in the west, just shy of the rushing highway, and Sam told Dean that it would be an Ikea.

Sam licked drips of salsa off his wrist, sucked at his fingers. The sun was directly at their backs and it pounded into Dean, the whole surface of his skin glossed with sweat.

"Tell me about the vampires," Sam said, and so Dean did. He made it as gruesome as possible. Sam scrunched his face up, half-disgust and half-delight like when they used to watch late-night horror movies and Dean would grab at Sam at the scariest parts, making him jump and yelp.

"Gross," Sam said approvingly as Dean finished up his story. "I don't believe for a second you decapitated two in one swing, though."

"Well, you had to be there."

"No thanks."

Dean eyed him, hands occupied shredding pieces of tinfoil into silver ash. "Ah, you've probably gone all soft, anyway. Lost all your moves."

Sam laughed, but didn't sound amused. "Believe that at your own peril, man."

"I'm shaking, Sammy."

Dean tossed it out casually, automatically, not meaning anything particular by it, but Sam's breath caught, a slight hiccup just loud enough for Dean to hear. He glanced over and Sam was staring back at him, damnable heat in his eyes and Dean's stomach curled, thinking about all the years he'd been misinterpreting that look on his brother's face. Dean cut his eyes away. A fairly uncomfortable moment of silence passed, and then Sam said:

"Are you leaving today?"

"Yeah."

"You. You don't have to."

Stealing a look at Sam, Dean found him gazing determinedly at the cranes whirring to life around the unfinished Ikea. There was a twitch in his jaw, his teeth gritted together, and Dean didn't like this look either. He'd seen it before, when their father had told Sam, "If you go, don't bother coming back."

"Things to do, dude. Stuff to kill."

"Instead of that," Sam said, gone all matter-of-fact, "you could stick around."

Dean glared at his brother, though he didn't feel angry exactly; it was just the only expression that seemed to fit.

"And do what, genius?"

Sam didn't look at him. The corner of his mouth crimped, the restless ghost of a smirk. "Me, for one."

It froze something on the inside of Dean, caught him in a set of high-beams, the headlight of a goddamn train. He shuddered just once, hard enough that his teeth clacked, and his fingers dug into his leg. Part of him was still existing totally in the moment when he'd laid his chest across his brother's back, and it didn't take much for the memory to become overwhelming.

"That's, um. Not really. Um."

Sam knocked their shoulders together. "Use your words, Dean."

"Shut up." Dean licked his lips, not daring to look at his brother. "I'm not, like. I'm not gonna run away with you, Sam, fuck."

"It isn't--you're twenty-four years old, Dean, it's not running away anymore."

Dean shook his head, one hand in a fist pressed to the outside of his leg. He fought nausea, his throat still seared from hot sauce. It'd be months before he saw Sam again, months at the very least, and it killed Dean that they were going out like this.

"This, it's, this isn't a fucking _solution_," Dean insisted. "Not to anything."

Sam grabbed Dean's wrist, making Dean start, his heel thocking on the ground. Sam had him held so tight.

"It's the solution to you being gone. And me being gone. Tell me, Dean, honestly tell me that isn't the first thing you'd change."

"Sam!" Dean tore away from him, bolted to his feet and wrapped his own hand around his wrist. "Don't, don't try and-"

"What?" And Sam was up, unfolding before Dean and his eyes were sparking, his teeth flashing white. He blocked out the sun. "Five years I've been waiting for you to buy a clue, man, so pay attention." He snatched a handful of Dean's shirt at the shoulder. "When we fuck around, it's got nothing to do with how fucked-up we are."

Wrenching his head to the side, Dean really wasn't in the mood for fucking _riddles_ but trust Sam to never do anything easy. He tried to smack Sam's hand off him, but he was like a rock wall.

"Fucking your brother, not fucked-up at all," Dean muttered, his face burning.

"Not when it's you and me," Sam told him, sounding dead certain.

"How can you even say that?"

"Because I _am_ fucked-up most of the rest of the time, and so are you, and I can tell the difference. It would _be_ different."

"Dude, you're supposed to be the smart one," Dean said. His voice was unsteady, his heartbeat tasting sour in his mouth. "Quit talking about stuff that'll never happen."

Sam's face hardened. His knuckles dragged an inch or two on Dean's chest. "It would if you'd let it."

"No, Sam, do you still not get it? You left for a reason and I stayed for a reason and that, all that stuff is still _true_." Dean gestured at the flawless California morning breaking all around them, the civilian world ruled off-limits to him. "I don't belong here, you gotta know that."

Blinking fast, Sam answered, "I never belonged anywhere we went."

"Yeah. And I haven't asked you to come back with me, have I."

Sam's mouth moved but he didn't say anything. The pressure of his fist on Dean's chest eased, but it was still atop old bruises and it was still a place where Sam was touching him. It still hurt.

"I. I was wondering if you were gonna," Sam said eventually, wide-eyed and low-toned. Dean looked down.

"I don't actually go around looking to get rejected, Sammy."

"All appearances to the contrary."

Dean's lips formed a smile but there was nothing behind it. "Yeah."

"So, what?" Sam's voice broke, fell small and unsure. "You're just gonna drive away and then, what then?"

Dean moved his shoulders in a shrug. He listened to the rhythm of the cars on the highway, picking out different engines and praying for a strip of blacktop all his own.

"Another couple of years will pass," Dean told his brother. "And we'll see where we end up."

Sam's mouth thinned down to almost nothing, a brief flare of reckless light in his eyes, and he released Dean's shirt, shoving him away. Sam's shadow fell off him like a shed skin and Dean was hit full-on by the sun, vision sheared away. Dean couldn't see, at that moment struck totally blind, but he knew Sam was walking away from him.

He could feel the distance between them, splitting like a fault line. He knew the moment Sam was out of arm's reach, out of earshot, out of sight. Dean tracked his brother's retreat and memorized every inch of it, hoping against all evidence that he might someday follow a trail that led him back to Sam.

(break)

As it turned out, that was the last time.

THE END


End file.
